...external senses—this is the physiological organism, the body; its organizer is inaccessible to them, he is presupposed within the body; this is—spiritual personality"...

Very already "general"!! Phrases. The savage and primitive communism are smudged over. Materialism and idealism in Greece too.

The concept of spirit acquires an ever more abstract character.

When the famous question was posed in the history of Greek philosophy:

how is it possible that from pure, unchanging, immaterial substance there flows the diversity of transitory phenomena of the material world? in what relation does "being" stand to "becoming"?—this was not, contrary to the assurances of all manner of historiographers of philosophy, the highest flight of noble human thought, the most disinterested effort directed toward solving the greatest mystery of creation and thereby blessing mankind for all eternity. The matter was far simpler! Such a formulation of the question spoke of nothing other than the fact that in Greek cities the process of social stratification had advanced far, that the chasm between social "upper" and "lower" strata had become deeper, and the old ideology of the organizers, which corresponded to less differentiated social relations, had lost its right to exist. Before, despite all the difference between substance and the world of phenomena, the immediate connection between them aroused no doubts. Now the existence of this connection is denied. Substance and the world of phenomena are declared to be incommensurable quantities. Relations between them are possible only through a series of intermediate links. Or, expressing ourselves in more philosophical language, we cannot establish their interrelationship either by means of the senses or by means of ordinary thinking: for this there is required the assistance of some special "idea," a special intuition.

*Belles-lettres
and mere phrase.
only
idealism!
yes, yes.
And Greek
materialism?
and the skeptics??*

462

V. I. LENIN

II